Educating The Media

Okay, this is just too much to ignore. From the comments section on my chem demil post yesterday, bugsaw notes this "journalist's" article on "Texas incineration of toxic nerve gas byproduct gets suspended, for now." Actually, Asher Price runs a blog on the Austin Statesman's online site. Asher buys into the activists' argument on how the big, bad Army is abusing the "poor, largely black city in the heart of a chemical-industrial area." But that's not the bad part. No, Asher uses, as evidence to how bad VX agent is, dialogue from the movie "The Rock."

Should there be any question about just how toxic VX nerve gas is, just review this dialogue from the 1996 movie “The Rock”. Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (played by Nicholas Cage) and John Mason (Sean Connery), have essentially broken into Alcatraz to disarm a VX nerve gas warhead:

[Mason And Goodspeed are defusing a poison gas rocket]

John Mason: What exactly does this stuff do?

Stanley Goodspeed: If the rocket renders it aerosol, it could take out an entire city of people.

John Mason: Really? And what happens if you drop one?

Stanley Goodspeed: Happily, it’d just wipe out you and me.

John Mason: How?

Stanley Goodspeed: It’s a cholinesterase inhibitor. Stops the brain from sending nerve messages down the spinal cord within thirty seconds. Any epidermal exposure or inhalation and you’ll know. A twinge at the small of your back as the poison seizes your nervous system…

[Mason has lifted the device to look at it]

Stanley Goodspeed: DO NOT MOVE THAT! Your muscles freeze, you can’t breathe, you spasm so hard you break your own back and spit your guts out. But that’s after your skin melts off.

I predict that Asher's next posts will include a cautionary warning about the dangers of radioactive spiders and a commentary on the Mutants Registration Act. "The Rock" was an okay action film, distorting both military combat operations and chemical warfare capabilities, but I always use it as a reference for how Hollywood gives in on exaggerating a perfectly good and effective weapon system. The idea that anyone would reference it in the same breath as a serious discussion on the Army's actual chemical weapons program is just insane.

Asher's previous commentary credits include articles in The New Republic and The American Prospect. I wonder why he hasn't printed there for the last four years? Lack of research skills, perhaps?

Comments

[darrelplant]

Lack of research skills has never stopped anyone from publishing in The New Republic.

[CBH]

I saw once on the Simpsons where this weird gas turned them all inside out and then they did a number from "Chorus Line", all inside out like that, with the dog chewing on Homer's leg and blood splattering around some. That was really really really scary, and I'd hate it if it happened to me (especially the spontaneously bursting into a Chorus Line song part - I guess that would be similar to the "gay gas" from last week).

Can I start writing for armchairgeneralist now, J.?
Please Please Please?

darrelplant - nice shot man.

[Witheld for Your Safety]

I was on Johnston Atoll when they were processing chemical agent at the destruction facility there (JACADS). My luck, they were showing "The Rock" at the outdoor theater. This made for great comedy out there. Another Hollywood sensationalism; along with any so-called journalist who quotes it. Just plain ignorant and irresponsible.